Skip to footer

Five resolutions to succeed in college

Many college students spent their winter break with friends and family, and are returning to campus more committed and energized. But far too many others are not. Unsuccessful students may be contemplating taking a break from school or dropping out altogether.

Academic ability, while important, is only part of the picture when it comes to being successful in college. Jasmine Stirling, chief marketing officer at InsideTrack, which offers technology-enabled student coaching services, suggests five resolutions to help any college student be more successful.

2. Proactively manage your time and money

  • By

The lack of structure and guidance in college can be exhilarating for many students when they arrive on campus. Unfortunately, the novelty wears off when students who don’t bring strong skills in time management begin to procrastinate, fall behind, and find themselves pulling all-nighters as deadlines approach. Many of these students swing between a state of avoidance and one of overwhelming anxiety.

Similarly, financial freedom can derail students who have received their first credit card and are making their own decisions about spending. That’s why it’s critical that even the most academically gifted students hone their time management and personal finance skills in their first year of college.

Students should actively manage an online or paper calendar, set weekly goals around how to manage their time and money, and proactively learn new skills by reading books like David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” or Suze Orman’s “The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke.”

2 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.